Cura Questions! Easier support Removal!

Welcome to the Technivorous channel! We are talking all about Kira questions today, and today's question is, how can I make the supports easier to remove? So we're going to talk about Kira's supports and support interface right now. And here we have Kira open. This is a really awkward model. It is a pauldron for a suit of cosplay armor, and as you can see, there's really no suitable way to orient this to print well without support. I can minimize it, I believe, by using one of these ends right here. But that is also minimizing my contact with the build plate, and I'm definitely going to need support in a lot of places. So this whole area right here is going to be supported, and today we are talking about support interface. Now I have my settings pretty well dialed in for easy removal of support, so let's go ahead and take a look. Now you don't see the interface settings under support until you activate them. So let's go ahead and type in interface, and you'll see all these extra settings in support. Okay, what you're going to want to do is adjust a couple of these. So the interface thickness is the depth of plastic between the actual support and the model. Increasing that will give you a better surface to print on top of, and a better contact surface, but it might also lead to more fusion. So the main thing with the support interface is going to be the interface density here. This is going to determine how thick it is in the place where it touches your model. So mine is set to 33.33%, and that is actually not bad. Let's go ahead and take a slice. We'll zoom in on the support interface itself in the preview mode, and I can get you a good idea of what we're talking about because basically it builds up our support, and then it stops three or four layers below where it needs the support, and then it builds up this little X pattern that's super easy to remove. Now sometimes when you rip the supports off, it leaves little chunks of that X pattern, and if you scrape those off, they come off really easily, but if you sand them, you will sand them down, and you actually make the surface rougher. So let's get in here and take a close look at exactly what I'm talking about. And the X pattern I'm talking about is this grid. There is other settings in here for the interface, but the grid works really, really well. So if you're having problems with your support not coming off of the model, decrease the density just a little bit. I wouldn't go below 25%, and then go ahead and increase the resolution a little bit because that will make sure that it prints a little bit further away from the model. So you don't want to increase that too much or it'll try to print in thin air above the support, and it'll pretty much make your support useless. So this is one of those things where if you're having issues with it sticking at the bottom, there are other things other than your support interface that could be causing problems, such as not moving enough in the vertical direction and compressing your layers, or any sort of overextrusion on the interface layer can cause the interface to stick to the print. If you're using these settings, and they are the stock settings for the Ender 3, it should work pretty well. So let's zoom in, see if we can get an actual look at this interface, because it's going to be right at the top of the support where the support meets the model here. We can get in there pretty well. Actually, I'm going to scroll around here. So these patterns here, I have three layers, okay? Just a little bit, so I know where I'm at. Okay, so the light blue in here, that is your support. The bluish purple color, that is your support interface, okay? So increasing the thickness will make this further away from the model as well, just put more lines in between there. You can see it's at 0.8 there. So this is one of those things where you're going to want to be pretty specific. So increasing the resolution will make these squares smaller, which will make it more contact points and kind of make it... This is like your density for infill, but for this grid pattern here. So this is basically what you need to look at when you're having problems issue or having issues removing support from your model. The interface is the best way to solve that. I can say before adjusting your interface settings, make sure you have tree support checked. I did a video on that the other day. I use it for pretty much everything. In the video I did the other day, it actually saved me over half of the amount of filament that we used over regular support. So definitely worth checking out. And if you're using tree support, the interface is going to be easier to remove as it is because these are kind of randomly placed. They're not stuck in straight lines, which give it structural stability. So these are pretty easy to rip off and you'll have a much better time if you're using tree supports. Once you get the tree support set up and you print a couple models with it, you may look at changing your interface settings a little bit. But for the most part, as I said, the stock Ender 3 interface settings are pretty much on point. So if you're having issues with stuff sticking to your model, you're probably having other mechanical issues such as over extrusion or under climb on the Z axis. So that's going to be it for this video guys. I love answering your questions. So if you have any or there's anything you'd like to know, leave them in the comments down below and I will see you in the next one. Tech Nibber is out. 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